Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ

“Saints cannot exist without a community, as they require, like all of us, nurturance by a people who, while often unfaithful, preserve the habits necessary to learn the story of God.”
― Stanley Hauerwas

“Without God's Spirit, there is nothing we can do that will count for God's kingdom. Without God's Spirit, the church simply can't be the church.”
― N.T. Wright

“Whether [new Protestant church movements] place their emphasis on new worship styles, expressions of the Holy Spirit’s power, evangelism to seekers, or Bible teaching, these so-called new movements still operate out of the fallacious assumption that the church belongs firmly in the town square, that is, at the heart of Western culture. And if they begin with this mistaken belief about their position in Western society, all their church planting, all their reproduction will simply mirror this misapprehension.”
― Michael Frost & Alan Hirsch, The Shaping of Things to Come: Innovation and Mission for the 21 Century Church

“Because of Christ's prevenient and unconditional invitation, the fellowship of the table cannot be restricted to people who are 'faithful to the church', or to the 'inner circle' of the community. For it is not the feast of the particularly righteous, of the people who think that they are particularly devout; it is the feast of the weary and heavy-laden, who have heard the call to refreshment.”
― Jürgen Moltmann, The Church in the Power of the Spirit

“Faith is the door to the full inner life of the Church, a life which includes not only access to an authoritative teaching but above all to a deep personal experience which is at once unique and yet shared by the whole Body of Christ, in the Spirit of Christ.”
― Thomas Merton, Zen and the Birds of Appetite

“In post-Christendom, the church is that community of people who look to discover what God is actively doing in the world around them and then join themselves to that work. The church is that community of people gathered around Jesus Christ in order to participate in his life and incarnate it into the context where he has placed them.”
― Tim Keel, Intuitive Leadership: Embracing a Paradigm of Narrative, Metaphor, and Chaos

“Pastors and Bible teachers go about their work in communal settings, where they listen to as well as deliver sermons, hear as well as speak, and gain biblical insights from their parishioners as much as they pass them on.”
― Peter J. Leithart, Deep Exegesis: The Mystery of Reading Scripture

“Hence the vocation of the Church of Christ in the world, in political conflict and social strife, is inherently eschatological. The Church is the embassy of the eschaton in the world. The church is the image of what the world is in its essential being. The Church is the trustee of the society which the world, not subjected to the power of death, is to be on that last day when the world is fulfilled in all things in God.”
― William Stringfellow, Dissenter in a Great Society: A Christian View of America in Crisis

“I sometimes find, especially among my peers, that authenticity is not a…means of growing in holiness, but a convenient cover for endless introspection, doubt, uncertainty, anger, and worldliness. So that if other Christians seem pure, assured, and happy we despise them for being inauthentic.

Granted, the church shouldn’t be happy-clappy naive about life’s struggles. Plenty of psalms show us godly ways to be real with our negative emotions. But the church should not apologize for preaching a confident Christ and exhorting us to trust Him in all things. Church is not meant to foster an existential crisis of faith every week”
― Kevin DeYoung, Why We Love the Church: In Praise of Institutions and Organized Religion

“It is not possible to understand the NT concept of the church if we overlook the numerous metaphors used to portray it. The church is Christ's body, a temple, a family, a royal priesthood, twelve tribes, the chosen race, Abraham's children, the new creation, the bride of Christ, and so on. Bible readers should be careful not to construct their theology of the church on a single metaphor.”
― David Ewert, How To Understand The Bible

“The Christian experience is not primarily formed by our liturgy, doctrine, or ecclesiology, as important as those might be. We are formed by the dangerous stories of our great hero.”
― Michael Frost, Exiles: Living Missionally in a Post-Christian Culture

“I've accepted the fact that I'm going to be a sad man for the rest of my life because I get calls all the time of the saddest things that are happening in the church.”
― Paul David Tripp

“In order for the assembly (ekklesia) to be built up, every believer needs to rise up and be actively seeking the Lord and functioning according to the gifts that the Spirit has given each one.”
― Henry Hon

“...I begin with three features of Calvin's thought that highlight the preeminence of the church in his theology. First, Calvin asserted the right of the church to regulate its own discipline and government...Second, Calvin had a high view of the ministry of word and sacrament in the church...Third, Calvin in accord with his doctrine of the two kingdoms, identified the church alone with the spiritual kingdom of Christ”
― David VanDrunen, Always Reformed: Essays in Honor of W. Robert Godfrey

“Such rich features of Calvin's ecclesiology highlight how his work of reform was in large respect a reform of ecclesiastical culture. One can only imagine how differently the citizen of Geneva must have experienced the church before and after its reformation. Under Calvin's vision, as implemented in Geneva, Christianity now entailed a very different kind of worship, a very different place of word and sacraments, a very different idea of ecclesiastical discipline, and a very different conception of ecclesiastical government. This was a reformed Christianity, and a reformed Christianity meant a reformed church.”
― David VanDrunen, Always Reformed: Essays in Honor of W. Robert Godfrey

“Though Kuyper's views on special and common grace and sphere sovereignty are a source of difficult questions about the broader "Christian culture" issue, it is important to note that they also underline important aspects of his ecclesiology. Kuyper believed that common grace, under the lordship of the eternal Son of God, preserved this world with its natural activities and institutions. Special grace, on the other hand, under the lordship of the incarnate Son of God, bestowed saving blessing and thereby ushered in something new. The ministry of the saving grace belong particularly to the institutional church and its means of grace. The idea of sphere sovereignty, for Kuyper, indicated that the authority and activity of the church has a monopoly , as it were, over its distinctive work of ministering special , saving, recreating grace to god's people through its word, sacraments, government, and discipline. Kuyper's terms and categories may have been innovative, bu the larger idea of the church's preeminence in the outworking of Christ's redemptive work should have been familiar to those nurtured in the Reformed tradition.”
― David VanDrunen, Always Reformed: Essays in Honor of W. Robert Godfrey